[From Litha to Lammas]: The Art of the Impossible, R, 6/8, Harry/Blaise/Draco/Theo

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Six

“Harry! You’re all right!”

Neville was on his feet across the small room at the Ministry they’d walked into, which only contained a table and eight chairs. His eyes shone with something that—Harry didn’t understand, to be frank. There was hope, and caution, and who knew what else? He kept looking at Harry carefully, as if searching for injuries.

“I’m all right,” Harry echoed. He couldn’t exactly say he was fine. And he discovered that he had no desire to run around the table and try to hug Neville, even though Neville had turned towards him as if he thought that would happen. He smiled tightly and sat down in one of the chairs on the side of the table nearest the door.

“Good,” Neville said, blinking. Maybe he’d expected the attempted hug. He sat down in the chair opposite Harry’s, while Ron and Hermione took the ones on either side of him, his eyes searching Harry’s.

Luna was the last person to waltz through the door, and she walked straight over to Harry and hugged him and said, “Thank you for saving Daddy’s life.”

Harry relaxed as he hugged her. “I’m glad I was useful,” he said, pulling back. “Is he okay? Does he need any healing?”

“He’s fine,” Luna said. She was smiling dreamily, but she was also focused on Harry, more than he had ever seen her. “He needed a bit of healing from the coldness of the cells, because they weren’t at all the sort of space that you would want to keep a Heliopath in. Daddy has Heliopath blood, you know. But he was fed regularly, and he was allowed ink and parchment, and that’s all he really needs.”

Harry relaxed. He didn’t turn to look at the others as Blaise sat on his right and Theo on his left, with Draco at the chair beyond that, but at least one of the former prisoners was okay.

“Originally, I wanted to have all the released prisoners and their families here, but then I was told this meeting was restricted to eight people only,” he said. “But Blaise said that you would bring Pensieve memories of them?”

“Blaise?”

Harry winced and looked sideways at Ron. Suddenly it was like they were back in the Gryffindor common room as sixth-years, when Harry had been the Quidditch Captain and Ron was complaining about some plan that wouldn’t give him as much to do as the Keeper. “Yes. Zabini?” He gestured vaguely to the side, although of course, straight at Blaise, since Harry knew where he was without looking.

(He didn’t like that. He also didn’t like the thought that he might never have had anything like that).

“You call them by their first names now?”

Oh. Harry drew in a breath. A week ago, he would have been promising never to do it again, but then, a week ago, he would have been free and he wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

“Yes,” he simply said. “To keep the peace, it’s what I do.”

“What are they doing to you?” Hermione breathed, her eyes hard as she looked at the Slytherins. “Mistreating you? Enspelling you?”

Yes and no, Harry thought, feeling hysteria well up in him. He was pretty sure what would happen if he tried, but he still opened his mouth to explain the bond.

Words simply ceased to exist. Harry sighed. He had thought the bond would probably keep itself a secret, but he’d had to try.

“You are!” Hermione jumped to her feet and glared at Draco, probably because he was the one who had held the strictest and shittiest blood purity beliefs in school. “What did you do to him? The treaty says—”

“It’s not something that they did,” Harry interrupted. “Not exactly. It’s—like a consequence of living in a magical house like Malfoy Manor.”

“He is fine physically, as you can see,” Theo drawled. Harry glanced at him and saw his face like ice-covered stone, his eyes locked on Hermione. “And the treaty says that we must refrain from hurting him physically unless he attacks one of us, but it does not say that we must have a care for his psychological welfare. You admitted yourself, Granger, that living as a hostage would be psychologically taxing for anyone and you couldn’t require it of us.”

Shit. She said that?

Harry closed his hands in front of him. He reminded himself, again, that his “bondmates” had done terrible things, too, and the bond wasn’t the least of them, even if the kidnappings were worse.

But he didn’t have any option to fight with his bondmates, so he would ask the only questions he could.

“I did have some things I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, speaking quickly because he could tell that Hermione was about to begin a rant, and there was no getting a word in edgewise once that began. “For one, why didn’t you ever tell me about the money that it turned out I inherited from Sirius Black?”

Hermione sat down in her chair slowly, eyes and mouth round with shock. Harry just waited, turning his head back and forth between her and Neville and Ron, not sure which of them would answer. Luna was watching, but humming under her breath, and seemed to be more involved with braiding a silver feather into her hair.

“We---didn’t think about it,” Neville said, after a long struggle with clearing his throat. “We learned that you were his heir when it turned out that a house in his will had gone to Professor Lupin, but we couldn’t touch the money any more than the Ministry could. It had to be used by someone who had your care and welfare primarily in mind.”

“And you didn’t?”

The far end of the table cracked in half and fell off. Everyone swiveled to stare at it. Harry put his hand across his eyes, breathing harshly. He hadn’t had—a display of temper like that in years. And it had never been that powerful.

A thought pushed against the bond barrier. Harry made the holes a little wider so he could hear it.

You are growing more powerful.

Theo sounded so pleased and proud and—everything—that Harry thickened the barrier again and turned to face Neville as Neville’s eyes came back to his. Neville looked pale, and a little afraid.

“What have they done to you, Harry?” he whispered.

“No, I’m asking the questions right now,” Harry said. His voice was louder and more strident than he liked, but right now, he was thinking that he should have started being more strident years ago. “Why didn’t you tell me? I might have—I might have managed to claim it, if I knew about it! And at least when I was seventeen, I could have got hold of it.”

“It slipped our minds, honestly,” Neville said, spreading his hands and looking very much as if he wanted to go for his wand. “Just like the other things we knew about Black.”

“What other things?”

“That he was your godfather,” Ron said from the side. He was watching Harry with the kind of wrinkle in his brow that meant he was really, really worried. “And that he was innocent.”

The whole world seemed to stop. Harry turned and stared at Ron. Ron braced himself as if he thought that the chair he was in would crack in half the way the end of the table had when Harry lashed out with his magic. Harry couldn’t do anything like that right now, though. He was too lost in the swirling storm of numbness inside his head.

“What did you say?” he whispered.

Neville sighed and spoke, stepping in so Ron didn’t have to. The way he’d never stepped in for Harry, Harry noted dimly to himself, other than sometimes telling Malfoy to back off if Malfoy was taunting Harry. “We didn’t find out until after he was dead. Actually, more than a year after that. You remember how Ron had a pet rat who disappeared?”

“Yeah,” Harry said dazedly. He noticed Draco sit up in his chair down the table, but Harry couldn’t be concerned with Draco right now. He couldn’t take his eyes from Neville, his mind from Neville’s words.

“It turned out he was Peter Pettigrew in his Animagus form. Your parents’ friend whom Black supposedly killed. The real Secret-Keeper for your parents and mine.” Neville breathed out slowly. “He was a Death Eater, which is why he betrayed them. He and Black apparently switched jobs at the last minute, because they thought Black was too obvious, since he was your dad’s best friend and everything.”

Harry stared at him, silent, numb, the parts in him still broken and dancing furiously around each other instead of coming back together.

“How did you find out?” he whispered.

“Pettigrew was the Death Eater in the graveyard who helped resurrect Voldemort.” Draco and Blaise and Theo hissed as one, and Neville looked at them with that kingly kind of scorn Harry had once so admired. “He decided that it was really important for me to know that he’d lived years in the same dorm with me and could have killed me at any time. And then he bragged about who he was and how he’d evaded Black and, well, it all came out.”

Harry closed his eyes. It didn’t help. The information was falling across his brain in pieces, like snowflakes.

“And you didn’t tell me,” he whispered. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I thought about it after Pettigrew told me that Black was innocent.” Neville sounded remorseful. Harry couldn’t open his eyes to see if he looked remorseful, because right now he really couldn’t look. “But I thought that it would only make you feel bad, knowing your innocent godfather was dead and you couldn’t do anything for him. And then, it really did slip my mind. You know that summer was mad, with the Ministry trying to send Dementors after me and put me on trial for underage magic and the like.”

Harry opened his eyes and stared at Neville. The nasty voice in the back of his mind, which didn’t sound like anyone but himself at the moment, whispered, And he did it because he didn’t care if you knew or not.

No. That wasn’t strictly true, either. It sounded as if Neville had only made one decision to actually conceal the truth, about Black being innocent. Otherwise, it had happened because Neville just had more important things, and people, to worry about.

The other end of the table cracked and fell off. Luna drew back a little, shaking her head. “I don’t want it to fall on my toes,” she told Harry, with a faint frown.

Harry.

He hadn’t even noticed the bond thinning enough to let other people’s thoughts through. This was Blaise. Harry turned blindly in his direction, because if he didn’t calm down he was going to kill someone, and Blaise’s hand came to rest in his hair. Harry closed his eyes and accepted the depth of stillness welling up to envelop him.

“You did do something to Harry,” Hermione said flatly.

“We told him the truth about Black being his godfather and that he’d left money no one could touch and that wasn’t advertised as being his,” Draco said in a rough drawl. “Not about Black’s innocence, which we didn’t know. Yes, we did something. Instead of nothing.”

Harry heard them starting to argue, but he was too busy subduing his magic to listen. Or care. He put his head in his hands and ignored the way that Blaise’s hand was there. In fact, at some point it was withdrawn, maybe because Blaise accepted that he had to struggle on alone.

Harry could still feel them hovering behind the bond barrier, of course. Waiting, alert, for what they could do for him, or for him to break down and turn to them.

I won’t do that.

Harry managed to wrestle his temper and his magic under control after so many breaths of air that he thought hours might have passed. But when he lifted his head and focused on the room around him again, his bondmates and Neville and Ron and Hermione were still arguing. Luna had abandoned the argument altogether to doodle something that looked like a cloud with wings on the parchment in front of her.

“Stop.”

His bondmates stopped speaking at once. Neville and Hermione talked for a few seconds more, and then stopped, but Harry thought it was more because of the silence across the table from them than because they’d heard Harry.

It’s an unfair comparison. Blaise and Draco and Theo can feel you through the bond. You can’t compare Hermione and Neville to that when they can’t feel you at all and never had a reason to notice you.

Harry shook the thought from his head. Honestly, he was starting to resent being the mature and “fair” person all the time. Neville had never thought it might be unfair to keep the knowledge of Harry’s godfather from him. He’d just done it.

“You said something about Professor Lupin inheriting a house,” Harry said flatly. “I want to know what you mean by that, and what happened.” Professor Lupin had died in the Battle of Hogwarts, along with the woman he’d apparently married, Nymphadora Tonks.

“Sirius Black’s will left an old Black home to him,” Neville said. He was watching Harry closely. Harry couldn’t define his expression. “Professor Lupin was a werewolf, as you know, and he was basically living on the streets. So he moved in, and that house was also the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix because it had powerful wards.”

“Why did Black leave a house to Lupin in the will?”

“Both Black and Lupin were friends with your parents,” Hermione said, and blinked at him. “And with Neville’s parents, although they weren’t as close, I don’t think. Wait, Professor Lupin never told you that?”

Harry shook his head, his throat sour. Professor Lupin had chatted with Harry a few times and given him some advice on a few spells he kept mucking up in Defense, but he’d never mentioned…

“I thought he was a good professor, but now I see he was a terrible one,” Theo said conversationally. “If he couldn’t even be bothered to introduce himself to the son of two of his friends.”

“He was a werewolf,” Hermione said, arms folded. She was obviously braced for a line of bigotry from Theo. Harry should be, too, he thought, but he was just too numb. “He was probably too afraid of rejection to come near you, Harry. And since no one knew about Pettigrew at the time and Black had just died in prison, he was probably grieving, thinking that all his friends were gone.”

Harry said nothing.

“It’s understandable,” Hermione rattled on. “It’s not ideal, but it’s understandable, and he’s a brave man who did the best he could…”

Harry sank back into the numbness prowling through his brain again. He wanted to be away from there, he thought suddenly. He wanted to go Diagon Alley and just walk, even more than he wanted to go to Gringotts to see if there was anything personal Black has left for him. He didn’t want to talk to his friends the way he’d thought he would, and he didn’t want to hear about how everyone’s decisions not to tell him the truth or ignore him had been for the best.

“Show us the memories of the prisoners returning home,” Blaise said abruptly. “Harry’s tired and we want to get out of here.”

“You don’t care about those memories,” Hermione shot back. “If you did, you wouldn’t have kidnapped them in the first place!”

“Please just show them to me,” Harry whispered.

Neville held up a hand, and Hermione and Ron, who was opening his mouth, both fell silent and still. “Of course, Harry,” he said, and took a familiar silver Pensieve from his pocket, resizing it with a tap of his wand. His gaze was steady on Harry’s face as he touched his wand to his temple and took out the memories, but Harry just stared at the Pensieve.

Neville had let Harry see things in it that Harry never would have seen otherwise, including the resurrection of Voldemort in the graveyard. It had been incredibly brave of him. It had also helped Harry stand up against all the other students in fifth year who had been so sure that Neville was lying.

He’s incredibly brave. I have to remember that.

The thought dived and battered at the sides of his head as Harry watched the memories play out. Wizards and witches returning to their children, their parents, their siblings, cousins and aunts and uncles, hugging them and crying. Harry mostly didn’t recognize them. Xenophilius Lovegood had been the only person he’d been familiar with before they disappeared.

But he had restored them to their families, and so he’d done some good. He had, he told what felt like the bottomless pit in his stomach.

He nodded when the memories were done, and Neville nodded back and used the correct spell to remove them from the Pensieve and stick them back in his head.

“I’d like to speak with Harry alone,” Neville announced.

This made everyone else in the room except Luna object. Harry ignored the extra chorus in his mind and cocked his head at Neville. It was a little surprising that he’d made the request, but Harry supposed he might say things in private that would change Harry’s mind.

Change it about what?

Harry didn’t know. But he sat and watched as, little by little, Neville won everyone over. He did it to his friends by speaking sweetly and he did it to the Death Eaters by snarling at them, but he did it. Finally, they stood up to file out of the room, although by the tight slash of Hermione’s mouth across her face, almost no one was happy about it.

Blaise’s hand came to rest in Harry’s hair for a moment. You’ll let us know right away if he does anything?

Harry looked up and nodded tightly. Blaise gave him a smile that seemed sad and stepped out of the room, Theo and Draco following him with several backwards looks.

The moment the door closed, Neville flicked his wand at it and raised so many Silencing spells and Privacy Charms that Harry blinked a little. He looked at Neville with more interest. Maybe this was a secret that was sort of personal to Harry, the way the news about Sirius Black had been. At least Neville would tell him in that case.

Neville leaned forwards across the table and said quietly, “It’s important that you don’t listen to them.”

Harry nodded. “Because they lie and twist the truth.”

“That.” Neville looked as if he had to say something he didn’t want to say. Harry paid a little more attention. “And because we can’t afford to have you corrupted, Harry. We just absolutely can’t.”

Harry relaxed. “Because you have plans in the works to attack them? Or make sure you’re in a good position when the war starts again?”

Neville gives him a tense, unhappy smile. “Sort of, but I can’t tell you anything about our war plans now that you’re with them. I know that Malfoy at least is a Legilimens and could probably read your mind.”

Harry swallowed a laugh. Neville wouldn’t understand why Harry thought that was funny, because Harry couldn’t explain. “All right, I get it. But is there any other reason that you can’t afford to have me corrupted?”

Neville almost shoved back in his chair. Harry saw that, and saw that his hands, where he’d laid them on the table, had a fine tremor. “What do you mean?”

“I just—you sound so strict about it,” Harry said, while numbness crept in at the edges again. No. Please, no. Please don’t let him be hiding other secrets that he can’t tell me because he chose not to, not just because I’m living with Death Eaters. “And you already lied to me once about my godfather—”

“I didn’t lie, Harry! Merlin!”

“You didn’t tell me the truth!”

“You know that’s not the same thing!” Neville shook his head. Then he paused. “Well, you knew a few days ago, before we let you go to them. Maybe that was a mistake.”

Harry closed his eyes tightly. He wanted to shout that this wasn’t corruption, it was just about the fact that Neville should have told him the truth and hadn’t.

But Harry was caught up in this extremely stupid bond now. Who could know if he would have seen things the same way just a few days ago? What if Blaise and Theo and Draco had already managed to influence him against Neville, and his perspective couldn’t be trusted now?

Harry opened his eyes. “I want to see the letter you wrote Theo.”

“What?”

“They told me that you sent Theo a letter when he got out of Azkaban telling him that he should have served longer, or that you would hunt him, or something. I don’t—believe them, but I want to see that letter. I want to see what you said.”

Neville blinked at him, his brow furrowing and puzzlement seeming to overtake his anger. “I didn’t keep a copy of it.”

“I bet Theo did.”

“And you’re going to trust anything a bloody Death Eater tells you? Why have you already trusted them as much as you have?”

Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with one hand. Yeah, that was confusing, wasn’t it? It must be the influence of the bond. He shook his head and forced his eyes open again. “Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked, in a voice he knew was rusty from exhaustion.

“I wanted to tell you that it was very important for you not to be corrupted, yes.” Neville’s lips firmed the way Hermione’s had just before she left the room. “But it looks like I was too late.”

Harry stood up and left the room in silence, walking towards the feel of his bondmates and wondering if it was the bond or something else that seemed to have ruined his friendship with Neville.

*

“Mr. Black left instructions in his will that you were to have this.”

Harry reached out with trembling hands to take the silver locket on the fine chain that the goblin offered to him. He turned it over, cradling it, and let out a long sigh when he saw the initials on the back. JP. LE. They were intertwined with a long line that looked like a heart carved of running water, but it could have been a snake.

Theo’s hand landed on his shoulder for a second. “Should we give you a moment?”

“Please,” Harry murmured, keeping his head bowed. He wanted to say that it wouldn’t really matter; even outside this little meeting room where Griphook had started handing over the things Black had left for Harry, they’d be able to feel Harry’s emotions and know some of what was happening. But it at least gave him the illusion of privacy.

Theo nodded, touched his hair with one hand, and then turned and walked out the door. Blaise and Draco were already in the corridor. Both of them looked at Harry with solemn eyes as Theo shut the door between them.

Harry sighed and turned to face the goblin again. Griphook was watching him with sharp eyes. “Sorry about that. What else did he leave for me?” He looked hopefully at the shiny black lacquer box on the desk.

“You will not even open the locket, Mr. Potter?”

Harry swallowed. “I didn’t think it would…” But he didn’t need to explain all his own insecurities to a goblin who wouldn’t care about them anyway. He touched the clasp of the locket, which was shaped like a heart, and after a moment managed to open it.

Inside were tiny moving photographs of his parents.

Harry stared at them hungrily, clutching the locket close. He had only ever seen his parents in some pictures of the Order of the Phoenix Neville had. His mother looked younger here, less care-worn, and she was laughing with her red hair streaming behind her. His father appeared to have eyes only for her, but he glanced up at Harry at one point and winked.

Harry clutched the locket close, and then realized Griphook was still watching him. He cleared his throat and managed to snap it shut, ignoring the feeling that he was dropping his parents back into the darkness of death once again. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely, and strung the locket around his neck.

“You are welcome, Mr. Potter,” Griphook said quietly. “Mr. Black also left some books for you. Shall we take a look at them?”

Harry closed his eyes and nodded.

*

“Can I come in, Harry?”

“I ate,” Harry said dully, not looking up from the books spread out on the bed in front of him. “I went down to the kitchen and made myself dinner.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Draco closed the door behind him and came over to sit on the chair at the foot of Harry’s bed. Harry glanced at him, and then turned around and stared at the books again.

“Black left you books?” Draco asked, and nodded a little as his eyes went to the covers and pages. Then he saw the locket around Harry’s neck; he must have, because he paused. “That’s a very handsome piece of jewelry,” he said softly.

“Thanks,” Harry said. He was feeling numb again, except this time it wasn’t about Neville’s betrayal or—supposed betrayal. He pushed the thoughts of Neville away. Dealing with what was in front of him was overwhelming enough.

“It might help to talk about it,” Draco said, when several minutes had passed in silence. Harry could feel Theo and Blaise hovering in the bond, but they had withdrawn to what seemed like the furthest distance they could. There was silence from them, caution, something like pain.

Harry closed his eyes one more time, but he wasn’t getting rid of the mood, and maybe he wasn’t capable of dealing with the revelation on his own. He flipped open the first book and turned it so that Draco could see the words scribbled on the first page.

“To my godson Harry,” Draco murmured, leaning over to look. For a moment, his fingers gently brushed Harry’s. “With love, Sirius Black.” He looked up. Harry could feel him doing it. “Maybe I’m being stupid, but I honestly don’t know why this would distress you, Harry.”

Harry kept his eyes shut, and flipped to the next page.

Draco caught his breath and held it. There was silence in the room and down the bond for long enough that Harry could almost pretend he was alone, looking at the book in the bank again.

No. He hadn’t been alone even there. Griphook had been in the room.

“Harry. Harry, look at me, please.”

For all the varied tones Harry had heard in Draco’s voice since he had come to the Manor, he had never heard genuine kindness. He opened his eyes and turned his head. Draco cupped his cheek, his eyes full of compassion.

“You know that he wasn’t a Death Eater. You know he was innocent. I really don’t think Longbottom would have any reason to lie about that, not after keeping the whole existence of your godfather from you for so long.”

“I know that,” Harry whispered.

“Then what is it?”

Harry turned his head back to the page and stared at it again. There was an image there that was hard for him to make out, but it looked like a black dog and a pale horse running down a road, side-by-side.

Under the image was written The Secrets of Death and Destruction: A Primer of the Dark Arts.

There was one more note on the page, under the title, scrawled in the same hand that had written the dedication.

Use it well, Harry.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Draco said, and his hand smoothed over Harry’s cheek again.

“I—he was innocent, he wasn’t a Death Eater, he fought for the Order of the Phoenix and apparently was really loyal to them all along, and he wants me to use this?” Harry gestured wildly at the book and then collapsed back on the bed, tugging at his hair. Draco leaned over and put a hand on Harry’s hands to still them. “I don’t know what to make of it! I was all ready to idolize him, and now…”

“I know something about the Black family, with my mother being a member of it,” Draco said quietly, not moving away from Harry’s bedside. “There was a tradition of Dark Arts in the family, and Sirius Black walked away from it. He was a Gryffindor. I think he dedicated himself to that ideology as much to separate himself from the rest of the family as because he really believed in it.”

“Then why—”

“But he used Dark Arts on the battlefield,” Draco interrupted. “To save his friends. Mother told me about more than one occasion when Father came home damaged from a curse Sirius Black flung at him. He left you these books because to him, the kind of magic mattered less than whether he could use it to keep the people he loved safe. He loved you, Harry. I’m certain he did.”

Harry exhaled, shaky and uncertain. He stared at the book again and ended up leaning back into Draco’s embrace. Draco turned his head so that his lips were resting against Harry’s cheek, and they sat there like that.

It was—

Harry had no words, and that was a bad thing. He wanted words. He was sure that he’d had them a few days ago, before the revelations about Sirius Black and Neville and the bond and the others.

He didn’t have them now.

*

“What are you doing?”

Harry spun away from the mirrored wall he’d been about to cast a spell at and into a defensive crouch. Theo, standing behind him in the doorway, looked back and forth between Harry’s eyes and the mirrors.

“Practicing,” Harry snarled at last, when it became obvious that Theo wasn’t going to go away and wasn’t going to pretend that nothing had happened.

“Yes, I can see that.” Theo lounged his way into the room and leaned against the wall beside one of the mirrors. “So. What kind of spell? If it’s another one you’ve modified, would you be willing to teach me?”

“It’s not one I’ve modified!” Harry’s voice rang oddly and settled more oddly in the room, and Theo only stood there, waiting, eyes direct. Harry turned away, “It’s one that I’m practicing for the first time, and I don’t know if I’ll actually get it right, so could you please go away? You’re making me more nervous, being here.”

“I can Disillusion myself. Then it’ll be like no one is here with you.”

Harry snorted, not caring how rude it was. “I can feel you all the time, pressing on the bond.”

There was a long pause. Harry thought Theo was going to say something about how good the bond was, and how wonderful it was that Harry was succumbing to its presence, and grew a little unnerved at how long it was before the other man spoke next.

“We should be sharing thoughts with you more often now, if the bond was proceeding with you the way it happened with Draco and Blaise and me,” Theo said thoughtfully. “But although we’re closer, and we always know where you are, and the three of us can share thoughts with each other now all the time, we haven’t shared them with you.”

“I suppose next you’ll be wanting me to thank you for your consideration.”

“No. Harry—the bond is changing.”

“You said it would.”

“Not changing you,” Theo said. “I know that you have a desire for privacy, and the bond is respecting that. The bond is changing.”

Harry turned around and stared at him. Theo stared back, and his face had—all kinds of weird emotions on it. Harry knew he could read them if he reached out to the bond, but right now he didn’t want to do that. There was definitely some triumph and some fear there, though.

“Does that mean it’ll end?” Harry asked, hardly daring to hope. “We’ll be free to go our separate ways and the bond won’t demand anything further of us?”

“I don’t know,” Theo said. “It’s always been so powerful before…but maybe the addition of you to it was the factor that changed it past repair. And there’s the fact that you’re the magical part of us. Maybe you’ve gained control of its magic, just like Draco could always feel emotions most strongly before this.”

Harry closed his eyes and spent a moment reaching towards the bond, concentrating so that his reactions were as much his own as possible, but he could feel the others, too. And there was a different feeling to it.

Before, everything he’d got through the bond had been so overwhelming, it had been like standing under a waterfall. Now it was as if he stood waist-deep in a strong river, swayed by the current, but able to maintain his footing.

He opened his eyes and stared at Theo. “Does that mean other things will change, too?”

“What other things?”

“Will the dreams stop? Will I forget about my anger towards Neville?”

“For not telling you about Sirius Black?” Theo shook his head. “No. The bond never made us forget about anything before. It simply made us perceive things in another way.”

“Give me an example.”

Theo closed his eyes, but continued speaking steadily. And Harry thought that the bond still functioned enough to make sure that Theo couldn’t lie to him, at least. “Before the bond, I was always committed to just myself. I wanted—I wanted to get through life caring about as few people as possible. No one had ever helped or protected me when I was a child, so why should I help or protect them?

“I hated the bond at first. It bound me to two other people I didn’t have a choice about caring for, and to someone else I didn’t even know. But now…I know I am a stronger, more compassionate person. Not as compassionate as you or Longbottom, of course. But caring about more than my own survival and my academic interests.” Theo opened his eyes. “I can remember being the child who hated everyone else. I’m just not him anymore. And I’m glad of it.”

“Maybe the bond caused your gladness, too,” Harry muttered, scraping his foot back and forth on the stone floor of the mirror room.

“I suppose it’s possible, although I don’t think so.” Theo looked directly at Harry. “But if it changes to give you more freedom, I’ll be glad of it.”

“Wouldn’t that result in destroying the bond?”

“If you want to destroy it, then I only ask that you let us know first.” Theo shook his shoulders. “Because if I’m going to be catapulted back to being the person I was until I was thirteen, then I want to be prepared for it.” He took a step forwards. “Now, I’ve given you a lot in terms of secrets. Can you tell me what spell you were going to cast?”

Harry tensed, but it was true that the balance between them felt off right now. He nodded and turned away, raising his wand. “Animam contundo!”

The black light flashed in the mirrors and then hung there, hovering. Harry winced. That was the right look for it, according to the books that Sirius had left him.

“Congratulations,” Theo breathed. “Your first Dark Arts spell.”

“Yeah.” Harry shoved his hands into his robe pockets and stared at the mirrors in some bitterness. It hadn’t worked the first time he’d tried to cast it, but it had worked. And the snake on his right arm seemed to throb.

He scratched at it, and then looked more closely at what exactly he was scratching. He dropped his hand as if burned a moment later. It was the black marking that ran along the snake’s back, the color of what must be his own magic.

Harry tore his hand away and met Theo’s gaze. Theo gave him a small smile, and then turned and walked out of the room, as if totally satisfied by what Harry had told him.

Harry wasn’t. The spell he had cast—which he had chosen because it was supposed to be difficult to cast—was one that would bring down a crushing depression on the victim. It hadn’t affected the mirrors other than causing the beam of black light. Maybe it wouldn’t have affected someone even if Harry had cast it on a person.

But he didn’t know that. He had succumbed to corruption in at least one way, choosing a spell that was vicious and evil, and who cared if his godfather had left those books for him?

Harry closed his eyes, and wished he knew what the right thing to do was.